
Gabriel’s Horn, which has infinite surface area and finite volume and is one of my favorite examples in calculus. Image: Public domain, by RokerHRO via Wikimedia Commons.
Textbooks are too expensive. The price is often “what the consumer will bear,” and the student is stuck bearing outrageous prices because the alternative is to have no book at all. Boelkins writes, “it is my opinion that any student of calculus ought to have the opportunity to learn calculus from a text that is free of charge (if used in electronic format), and that instructors ought to have the same freedom, as opposed to being bound to books that cost more than $100 and sometimes even approach $200.” In another post, he paraphrases Robert Ghrist as saying in a talk, “the limiting resource should not be access, but rather time and talent.”
Read the full post at the AMS Blog on Math Blogs.
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